Christmas with the TLC Crew
by Lunartics
Summary: The main characters from the Lunar Chronicles gather at Scarlet's house for Christmas. They undertake many well-known traditions with their own twists, love, and humor. All ships are included, even Kinniko.


Disclaimer: All characters and references in this story are created and owned by Marissa Meyer. This story is completely for pleasure, no profit is being made.

No direct spoilers, except for the overall outcome of some characters. But there's no reason not to read the books first anyway, they're amazing.

The Rampion landed with a crunch on the frosty landing pad. Cinder sighed with visible relief. Thorne glanced back at her from the cockpit. "I swear I get better every time." Cinder rolled her eyes sarcastically, walking towards the exit ramp.

"I swear you get _worse_ ," she replied. Cress, who was standing beside her, laughed and smiled apologetically at a very hurt looking Thorne. Thorne jumped up from his chair and wrapped his left arm around Cress, leading her outside. Iko was already there, having immediately sprinted down the ramp squealing as she went, followed more calmly by Kinney, who Iko had managed to persuade into coming, for _muscular purposes_. When asked for further elaboration, she said the he was just nice to look at. Cinder suspected something else. The hatch closed behind them and Cinder was met with an immediate embrace from Winter, who had her peculiar twinkle in her eye. Cress went to meet Scarlet at the door, pulling her into an embrace. Thorne opened his arms in Jacin's direction suggestively. Jacin crossed his arms and scowled at Thorne but eventually walked over to him, asking him about the trip from Luna. Winter released Cinder and went to greet Thorne.

Cinder had spent a few months with Kai, but eventually had needed to go back to Luna, for political reasons. Thorne and Cress were more than happy to escort her and after their work distributing the antidote, they had gladly accepted Cinder's offer to stay for a visit. A few weeks before Christmas, Scarlet and Wolf invited the Rampion Crew to their house for the holidays. Winter and Jacin had arrived first, and then Kai, glad to escape from politics for a couple weeks. And finally, with Kinney in tow, Cinder, Iko, Thorne, and Cress headed to the farm. The takeoffs had been rocky as, despite his claims otherwise, Thorne still had made no apparent improvement, but it was worth it to all be together.

Kai came out of the house and rushed to embrace Cinder, wrapping her in his arms. Thorne whistled, and Scarlet, who had walked over, punched Thorne lightly in the arm seeing as Cinder was otherwise occupied.

Eventually the group disbanded, with Cinder and Kai walking off to an undisclosed location to be alone, Wolf tending to some of the animals and showing Kinney as he went, Scarlet went to the kitchen to prepare lunch, and Winter trailed after her.

And so peace reigned, for about five minutes.

In the living room, Cress and Iko were sitting on the couch, concentrating intently on a portscreen. Suddenly, the room was infused with the scent of almonds, and both girls looked up. Thorne was rubbing lotion into his hands, and as he noticed them staring at him, stared back. "What?"

"It smells like a perfume shop." Iko said, wrinkling her nose.

"But you can't even smell!" Thorne protested.

"Well that just goes to show how strong the scent is," Iko retorted, and turned her attention back to the port. After exchanging a smile with Thorne, Cress did as well, and Thorne shrugged and turned away from them to look at the Christmas tree. Turning his head, he tried to get a glimpse of his hair in an ornament, but the rounded red bulb was too small, and he couldn't get the right angle. Shrugging, Thorne removed it from the tree and surveyed his hair. It was looking quite nice, and he was about to mention this to Cress and Iko when the ornament slipped through his greasy fingers and shattered on the ground with a rather disproportionate crash. Both Cress and Iko leaped to their feet in surprise, but this reaction was dwarfed by a shout from the door.

Scarlet ran in and yelled, "What did you do? That was my grandmother's!"

Thorne looked sheepish, "Well, I wanted to see what my hair looked like."

Wolf entered in time to see Scarlet shouting, "Then use a mirror!" He glanced between them and slowly walked away, hunching his shoulders in a vain effort to look smaller. Exiting their game, Cress picked up the portscreen and searched the best way to fix a Christmas bulb. Almost unnoticed in the confusion, Winter crept in and began to try to piece the ornament back together with glitter glue, but cut her finger on the glass shards. Jacin who had followed Winter into the room, was immediately alarmed, and knelt down next to her to try to doctor her, but since his only option there was to fix her finger with glitter glue, led her protesting out of the room.

By this time, nobody would have been able to ignore the commotion and consequently, Cinder and Kai appeared in the entrance. Cinder leaned against the doorway and huffed, while Kai, began to mediate, rather unsuccessfully. A moment later, Iko looked down at the shards of ornament. Her eyes began to glow yellow, and she clasped her hands together in excitement and said excitedly, "We can go shopping for new ornaments!"

Kinney, who had shown up silently behind Cinder and was trying to stay out of the drama, glanced at her. "It was only _one_ ornament."

Iko pouted dramatically. "But think of all the nice places we can go!" She immediately began listing off all the stores in Rieux, France, thankfully, there weren't many, but then got distracted by a shard of ornament that had fallen near her and immediately began shrieking about how it was going to damage her synthetic skin fibers, causing her to draw the attention of almost everyone away from Scarlet and Thorne, even Kai, who turned away from the arguing pair in defeat.

Finally, Scarlet won the argument with Thorne and forced him to clean it up. Of course Wolf proudly noticed this and went to fetch the broom and dustpan for Thorne. When he handed them to Throne, he might have handed them over a bit too vigorously, or it may have been because of Thorne's ineptitude, most were of this opinion, but however it happened, the Christmas tree began falling towards the center of the room.

Iko immediately began shrieking, Cress screamed in terror before ducking behind Wolf, and Cinder put up her arm to protect her from the glass shards, which all bounced off. Wolf, being considerate enough to keep Cress behind him, flinched from the effect of the noise of his sensitive ears but immediately reached for Scarlet, shielding her from the scattering shards of ornaments. After the tree and all the ornaments had completely fallen, Winter crept back in with her glitter glue, but Jacin followed her and wrapped her in her arms, shaking his head slowly.

Cinder sighed, "Thorne, you idiot." Then, since Cress didn't normally wear shoes, she went to get a pair for her, allowing her to walk around without cutting herself, and Scarlet immediately resumed her banter at Thorne, "Now look what you've done, you ignoramus!"

Kinney offered to clean up, rolling his eyes as Iko immediately offered to help buy new ornaments, sounding more desperate now, but Scarlet immediately refused his efforts shouting, "He should do it himself, that _idiot_."

Winter snuck up the stairs to find more glue. Scarlet crossed her arms and huffed. "I thought we fixed her!" Jacin shrugged and took Winter by the hand, leading her into the kitchen. He'd meant to be stern with her but when she looked up at him with wide eyes he just sighed and began helping with the ornament situation.

Leaving Winter alone with her glue, Jacin walked over to see a scowling and slightly apologetic Thorne sweeping up the mess. He couldn't help but smirk. Cinder cast him a cool glare and jerked her head towards Thorne's ankles. A piece of a glass ornament had cut Thorne and he was bleeding just a little. Cress noticed and exclaimed, "Captain, you're bleeding!"

"Go on then", Cinder said to Jacin. He shrugged and waved a frowning Thorne over. Mumbling an apology to Scarlet on his way out, Thorne complied, though it was just a surface cut and was no big deal. While Jacin was tending to Thorne, Kinney fished sweeping up the mess.

Meanwhile, Cinder began to clean the bits of plastic, glass, and evergreen out of her prosthesis. Kai brushed past Cinder, giving her an amused look, before he went to help pick all of the ornaments off of the tree so it could be taken outside. When they had finished collecting the ornaments into a little pile, Cinder grabbed an old bed sheet from a closet and brought it over to them. After placing all of the broken bits too big to sweep up onto the blanket, Cinder lugged it into the kitchen where Scarlet had a box for any ornaments that weren't too badly damaged.

"Hey can someone help me with this tree?" Kinney yelled from the other room. Wolf looked up and headed over to the living room. He picked up the tree with ease, taking Kinney somewhat by surprise, and carried it outside. Kinney picked up all the flattened branches that had fallen off of the tree and followed Wolf. After a few minutes they came back inside covered in pine needles. Kinney began to sweep the needles on the floor, as even though he had just done so, moving the tree outside had dislodged even more.

Iko walked over to Kinney and took the broom. "I hate feeling useless. Besides, you were doing it wrong", Iko said with a playful glint in her eyes. Kinney scowled and grabbed the dustpan instead, following Iko out of the room.

Kai, who was helping Winter sort out any of the salvageable decorations, stood up.. "I have an idea," he said. They all looked up at him. "We should all go get a new Christmas tree together. We don't have this tradition in the Commonwealth but I know Christmas is special to some of you so I looked it up before I left."

Scarlet shrugged. "I was just going to have Wolf help me pick one out of the woods but you guys can come too. That sounds fun," Scarlet said.

"Okay," Kai said, "It's settled then." He grinned at Cinder. "Let's all go get a Christmas tree." Everyone finished the task they had and found some warm clothes to put on. Then they all followed Scarlet and Wolf outside.

They trudged over hard frosted earth, the dirt frozen from the cold, but still there was no snow, causing Winter agony. But still, they were all smiling. Scarlet had insisted they get their tree from the same place she and her grandmere had always gone, and so they were walking through a forest while she was reminiscing, smiling with a faint look of pain the way she always did when she talked about her grandmere, even so long afterwards. Wolf stared at her tenderly and adoringly as she walked.

Cress kept reaching out and patting trees in amazement, but jerked her hand back every time when she realized that everyone was watching her, grinning. Blushing, she stared straight ahead. In an attempt to make Cress feel better Thorne tapped her on the arm, pointed upwards, and began talking randomly about forest wildlife. Scarlet half turned to look at Cress. "I hope you know that he's making all of this up."

Iko shrugged, and smiled, instantly getting a dreamy look on her face. "Think of all the ornaments we can get!"

Cinder snorted. "I hope you realize that we need a tree first before we can put ornaments on one."

Winter smiled. "Think about technicalities later, now is for fun," and picking up her skirt in her hands, danced off through the forest laughing.

Jacin shook his head, and started running after her. "Winter you're going to hurt yourself!"

"When Jacin caught up to Winter and put his arm around her, she turned her to him, her eyes full of warm laughter. "Am I it? Oh well," and began running back towards the group, "Watch out, I'm going to tag you!"

Soon, most of the group was occupied playing a frolicsome game of tag, while Cinder, Kai, and Kinney continued through the forest to find the perfect tree. At last they found it, tall enough to reach the ceiling, but no taller, dense but not too bushy, and without any gaps in the branches. Kinney held it while Cinder cut it down and Kai looked on proudly, trying to direct them but then coming to the realization that he knew nothing of cutting down trees..

When they reached the others carrying the tree, they found them lying on the ground panting, except for Iko, who was sitting watching the others with a look of satisfaction. "I won the game," she announced.

"Well you were fully charged, you don't get tired." Thorne protested, "That isn't fair."

Iko shrugged, "That's a minor detail."

Cinder and Kinney set the tree on the ground. "Some of you need to help us bring this back to the house," Cinder said, looking pointedly at Throne but not actually expecting him to do anything. He didn't, but Wolf got up and carried the tree the rest of the way back by himself, with Kai walking in front of him, directing again.

As they were walking back Cress said, "You know, during my time on the satellite, I researched some of the early earthen Christmas traditions. People used to go around singing from door to door. They called it, um, caroling."

"That sounds like a great idea," Thorne said, far too happily. "I think we should all go caroling."

"Yes. It would be such fun," Winter added, "what should we sing?"

"I don't sing," Kinney informed them.

"Oh don't be a spoilsport." Iko butted him in the arm. "Think of it as a royal duty." When he looked at her sideways she sighed, "Oh come on, you have to. It'll be so much fun! Cinder, tell Kinney that he needs to go caroling with us."

"Um Iko…" Cinder trailed off. Kai glanced at her face and laughed. "I don't think all of us are so jazzed about caroling."

Jacin nodded and opened his mouth, but Winter put a finger on his lips. "Shush. And the rest of you too. Christmas is a time for fun and merriment and we will all go caroling together. If you can survive a revolution you can survive this too."

Scarlet began, "What if we-" but Winter hushed her. "All right, now we're all going caroling tonight. I'm glad you all agree." And smiling mischievously, she skipped ahead.

So when evening fell, the crew on the Rampion set out to go caroling with much less agitation but as much energy as they had setting out on their more dangerous missions. Thorne led, happy to be doing this for Cress, even though he could not sing. Cress walked with him, beaming excitedly.

At the first house, they all looked around at each other in trepidation, and then Iko counted out the beats and they started singing. Cinder and Kai, in the back of the group on purpose, walked away to a safe distance. Wolf, the only one to hear them over the music, turned, but did not move from his place beside Scarlet, where he was bouncing on the balls of his feet in time to the music.

Iko was the very obvious leader of the group, especially because she had all the songs downloaded into her head, and Winter and Cress were both smiling as they sang and were producing the prettiest music out of the group. Thorne began singing, but his voice was sadly lacking compared to any of the three girls and after about thirty seconds Kinney and Jacin forced him to stop. Jacin was only standing and seemed to be getting nothing from the singing, but he didn't leave and stood between Wolf and Kinney. Kinney, shocking everyone, had a very good baritone voice, which seemed to make Iko pleased.

A lot of the townspeople were surprised to see the rag tag group of people who saved the world singing at their doorstep. Kai and Cinder couldn't help but laugh during the entire ordeal.

But the best part of the evening was when they went home and were all sitting around the living room laughing. Winter suddenly went stiff and stared at the window, oblivious to the nine confused faces turned to hers. She got up slowly, as if in a dream, but then seemingly unable to hold herself back, ran to the nearest door and yanked it open, disappearing outside.

Jacin and Scarlet both raced after her, and the rest of them followed more slowly, huddling around the doorway as they watched the scene outside.

Winter was standing staring up into the sky, a blissful smile on her face. "Look Jacin," she said, "it's snowing."

And in the faint yellow glow from Scarlet's porch light, they all realized that it was in fact, snowing.

Jacin put an arm around her. "Yes, but it's also cold out here and we're all going to freeze. Let's go back in. The snow will still be here tomorrow."

Scarlet added, "We can have hot cocoa. I'll make it."

"I'll help!" Cress said brightly.

"Me too," Winter said, and followed the rest inside looking back at the snow.

The cocoa might have turned out more successful if less people had tried to help, and if someone had thought of hiding the marshmallows…

Scarlet made the cocoa. It was warm and creamy and tasted of sweet chocolate, and also infused the entire house with its scent. Cress stirred and added the milk and the marshmallows. Winter put swirls of whipped cream on top and attempted to use it to write people's initials.

Cinder and Kai started the trouble by stealing marshmallows. Cress threw her hands up in the air. "You can't just do that! Now somebody isn't going to have enough marshmallows."

Thorne's eyebrows raised. He was not going to be shortchanged of his marshmallows. Stealthily, he walked past Winter, who was adding flowers of whipped cream to one of the cups, and past Cress, who was counting the remaining marshmallows, and grabbed the entire bag. Cress spun around and scowled at Thorne, holding out her hand. Everyone stopped what they were doing and paid attention. Cress was never usually bold or demanding. Looking sheepish, Thorne's grin fell off of his face and he handed the bag over to Cress. Cress smiled, pulled a marshmallow out of the bag and chucked it at Thorne. Jacin snorted, which was as Cinder guessed, his way of laughing. Thorne picked up the marshmallow, spun around and threw it at Jacin. Winter giggled and Cress and Cinder burst out laughing. After a few minutes of tossing marshmallows at eachother and running around like crazy, they were all tired and cleaned up the mess.

"By the time Christmas is over my house will be dirtier than the chicken coup," Scarlet muttered. They all sat down in the living room with their hot chocolates and talked until they became too tired to stay up.

As usual, there wasn't enough room in Scarlet's house so some people had to stay on the Rampion. Winter got the guest bedroom and some blankets were brought in for Jacin, who slept on the floor by her side. Cinder, Kai, Cress, Thorne, and Iko stayed on the Rampion. Kinney slept soundly on the living room couch.

The next day everyone woke up rejuvenated and Iko was fully charged for the day's activities. Scarlet and Wolf had made breakfast which everyone happily enjoyed despite a scowling Iko who complained about taste buds. When everyone was finished, Iko leaped up form the living room couch and yelled, "Shopping!" They all turned to look at her. She grinned. "We have to go get new ornaments to decorate the new tree. Also just in case someone needs to get any last minute gifts."

Kinney set his dishes in the sink and walked over to Iko, his arms crossed. "The only problem with shopping is that I think we would be recognized. That might throw a wrench in our plans. Besides, I'm pretty sure no one here wants to get chased by a mob of townspeople," he said. Everyone nodded in agreement. "I'm the only one here who definitely won't get recognized. Anyone else who goes shopping will have to wear a glamour or a disguise."

Kai smiled. "You make this sound like it's a top secret mission or something. Luckily I brought my grey sweatshirt." Cinder started to laugh. Kai turned his head and smiled at her.

Cinder pulled her messy hair up into a ponytail. "You can go shopping if you want. I got my gifts for you guys before I arrived so I'm good. I can put up some lights on the tree while you guys are away anyways."

Kai nodded. "I finished my shopping too. I'll help you with the lights.

They went into the hangar to get the strands of lights, and untangled them, which was the hardest part. They put lights on the tree, and then Cinder got a ladder and put up lights in other places around the house, while Kai stood behind her to tell her when they were crooked, complimenting her as she did so.

Winter and Jacin were the first to arrive home and Winter began to embellish the tree with tinsel as well, to the point where she had tinsel in her hair, and began muttering, "Everything is shiny and starlike, I am a bright star, a ray of silver sunshine…"

Jacin watched her lovingly. Then, thinking that neither Cinder nor Kai was listening, he whispered back, "You're the brightest star of them all, Winter." But Cinder's sensitive audio picked it up and she smiled to herself.

When the rest of disguised shoppers came home, they needed to wrap their purchases, as did those who hadn't shopped, which all in all caused quite a mess. Kai used very nice wrapping paper, but his wrapping skills were lacking. Cinder wrapped hers with uncanny precision, all sharp corners and parallel lines, though the effect was often ruined when she spilled something on them afterwards. Scarlet wrapped her presents with paper and ribbons and tags and though they were not especially beautiful they were very cheerful. Wolf's presents were messiest and a few memorable times were wrapped with the paper inside out, but he took especial care with Scarlet's. Cress's wrapping was the most heartfelt, with carefully chosen colors and prints and special messages written on top. Thorne, using his skills as a criminal mastermind, went the smart way and put everything in gift bags. Winter used large quantities of packing paper, glitter glue, and curled ribbon, and somehow turned simple presents into exquisite works of art. Jacin didn't bother with the wrapping process and went to the store to have his gift wrapped at no additional cost, after all, he had saved the world. Iko's presents always had perfect symmetry, since she was android, and were overall the best wrapped, so she did Kinney's for him too.

After that, most of the crew hid their gifts, because knowing Throne, and likely others, wrapping paper was not going to keep them from deducing what their present was before Christmas. Cinder hid hers in her calf compartment, and Scarlet put hers in secret nooks and crannies all over the house. Thorne and Cress both hid theirs in the rampion, while Wolf, not bothering with secrecy, hid his in high places only he could reach. This caused a lot of indignation, especially from Iko, who found her present tucked onto the top of a chandelier. "Stars Wolf I can see it but I just can't get to it!" Nobody would help her find a ladder because they all wanted her to wait until Christmas, but Scarlet did end up moving the present because she was afraid it was a fire hazard.

After lunch, Scarlet went into the kitchen to begin making Christmas dinner which they were going to eat on Christmas Eve before everything dissolved into chaos on Christmas. Wolf, Cress and Cinder gave her help with limited skill, while Iko was clearly displeased about this lack of consideration for those without taste buds. Kinney went to keep her company, since he wouldn't have been any especial help in the kitchen anyway.

The others mainly made cookies. Winter's were pretty, and she made a personalized cookie for each of them. Jacin, Thorne, and Kai had repeated squabbles over the frosting and their cookies had varying degrees of messiness. Thorne's were undisputedly the worst, but it was argued which was better between Kai's and Jacin's. It was especially hard to decide because the cookies often got eaten before any accurate comparison could be made.

Wolf found a nice bowl, filled it with tomatoes and put it on the table like an elegantly prepared dish.

Thorne repeatedly tried to steal food to the point where he was locked out of the kitchen with Jacin put on duty to guard him. Cress felt bad for him and snuck out one of the cookies which they shared. Thorne made sure to give her the bigger half, while Jacin stood looking put out because neither of them offered him any.

By the time she was finished preparing dinner, Scarlet was exhausted, and subsided onto a chair with Wolf beside her. "I will be so ready to eat all of this," she groaned. Then she smiled at him. "Especially the tomatoes."

They ate Christmas dinner soon after, and sat around the table happily talking and laughing while they ate. Iko had some mistletoe and walked around making every ship kiss. And eventually they were all so full of good food that they could manage nothing more than going to bed, which was what they did.

On Christmas morning, nobody slept in, whether by choice or not. Thorne had decorated the Rampion with hundreds of lights the night before but had refrained from turning them on as a surprise. Unable to wait longer, he turned them on as soon as he woke up and in his excitement startled Cress, who was excited enough about her first Christmas not to be annoyed.

Jacin jolted awake early in the morning to find that Winter had disappeared. He began searching frantically for her through the house, rousing Kinney in the process, and they both rushed outside to find Winter making snow angels in the yard, as there was finally enough snow to do so. He brought her back inside to put on more clothes, leaving Kinney chuckling behind them.

Kai was awoken by a call from Torin about policy, since even though he was on vacation, he was still the emperor of an entire country. Torin's query needed to be answered immediately, but Kai managed to do properly and quickly. He turned to apologize to Cinder about waking her up, but she was sitting watching him proudly.

Iko, since she hadn't actually been asleep and was done charging, heard the commotion and emerged from the Rampion to go outside and join the snowball fight that Kinney, Winter, and Jacin had engaged after they had all gotten coats and bundled up.

Wolf and Scarlet woke up at their normal time, which was early enough in the morning that they were always the first ones up, and consequently were very surprised to find everyone else already awake.

Instead of making an elaborate breakfast, Scarlet threw together toast and eggs some simple foods since she knew nobody was going to be paying attention to breakfast, and Wolf provided the tomatoes. Everybody gathered in the living room, eating quickly, and then, after piling the dishes in the sink, they got to unwrapping.

Cinder was the first one to pull a present out of a bag and sat staring at it for a few moments. Then she said, with danger implied in her voice, "Thorne."

Thorne looked over. "What? Oh, I got that incase you ever fall in another lake, you know, to fix your," he gestured at his head, "computer thing."

Cinder was still staring at him. " _Thorne_." It was a bag of rice.

Scarlet took the attention away from Thorne by pulling a thick red hoodie out of a box. On the back, neatly embroidered, was the word, _Alpha._ "Thanks Wolf!"

Wolf smiled, forgetting to hide his canines. "You're welcome. I figured since you wear it so much you might like and new one. Winter did the embroidery."

Winter beamed at them from her spot on the couch. She picked up a box and shook it gently. "This feels heavy Jacin."

Jacin smiled. "Open it."

Winter pulled off the paper and opened the box. On a bed of tissue paper lay a snow globe, not a cheap one from a Christmas store, but an expensive glass one with an intricately molded scene inside and snow that looked almost real. She looked up at Jacin, who gave a very wide smile for Jacin standards. "It's so that no matter where you go, you can always carry a little bit of winter with you."

The romanticism of the scene was broken by Kai, who was looking down at something in his hands and laughing. He held it up for them all to see, and everyone grinned. He was holding a protein oats box. Iko looked proud. "The present was from Cinder, but the box was my idea."

"I ate the cereal," Cress added from across the room, where she was opening a tiny box. She lifted out a long silver chain, and dangling from it was a pendant in the shape of a globe. Over the Sahara Desert, a heart was painted. She looked over at Thorne. "I love it."

Iko called to Cress from across the room. "What is this?" She was holding up a card from Cress.

Cress hesitated. "Oh, well, it's just something I thought you might enjoy. I'm offering to help you set up a YouTube channel. You know, you can make videos, about what Cinder's been doing lately, about fashion, android awareness, whatever you want."

Iko's eyes were brightening. "Yes! Thanks Cress."

They were interrupted by a sound of confusion Kinney, followed by another of understanding. He was sitting near Jacin, who was holding something that at everyone's first glance appeared to be a knife.

Cinder looked at Kai quizzically. "You got Jacin a scalpel?"

Kai shrugged. "Well I wasn't really sure what to get, and since he's training to be a doctor." He looked over at Jacin. "It's the best of its kind, I got a recommendation from Fateen, she works in the palace labs." Kai finished unwrapping a rather large gift from Winter. "It's the Solar System."

Winter shrugged. "It was meant to be a wedding gift, but with everything that happened... Anyway, I hope you like it. I wanted Jacin to help me but he refused."

Jacin protested, "I was trying to keep you safe."

There was a great ripping of paper sound, and everyone looked over at Wolf, who was unwrapping a present with a lot of vigor. "Sorry," he said. "All this wrapping paper is just so fragile." The paper did look ridiculously thin next to Wolf's large hands, and muscles.

Iko bounced impatiently. "Well what's in it?" Kinney placed his hands on her shoulders to stop her.

Wolf finished unwrapping, more carefully that time, and held up a kit. It was labeled, _Grow Your Own! (Seeds and Pot Included.)_ He looked over at Scarlet, who looked back nervously. "I just thought that we don't have anything like these on the farm, and they can help remind us of Maha. You know-" The rest of her reply was smothered as Wolf pulled her into a hug.

The beautiful moment was punctuated by an uncharacteristic gasp from Thorne. "Do you actually mean that?" He was holding a card from Cress in his fingers and was grasping it so tightly that it was beginning to crumple.

"Why would I have told you it I didn't mean it."

Everyone was staring at them, and Thorne slowly shook his head, smiling at Cress.

Winter broke the silence. "What is it?"

"Curiosity killed the cat," Scarlet added.

"Well actually," Thorne said, "Cress is suggesting that we get a cat."

Cress turned away from Thorne to look at all the people who were now staring at her. "I mean obviously we'll have to fix up the Rampion a bit and buy some stuff, and it won't have access to the entire ship, but I mean, there's not reason we shouldn't have a cat. It would be nice."

"It'll be nice for you to have some company other than Thorne," Cinder said with a grin.

"Hey," objected Thorne.

Cress smiled apologetically and turned to a present next to her. When she opened the lid, she saw only shredded packaging paper. Trying to keep it in the box and refrain from creating more of a mess that there already was, she began to dig around gently, looking for the present. After a few minutes she looked over at Winter. "Is the present really small?"

Winter considered this. "Well I don't know, it depends whether memories are smaller or larger than material objects."

Cress paused for a moment before recognition flooded across her face. "Oh from that time!" she exclaimed. "When you hid me in the box of packing fluff!"

Thorne turned, "When she hid- oh oops…" His elbow had knocked into the box as he rotated and it tipped over, spilling shreds of paper across the floor.

"Thorne!" Scarlet cried.

Thorne put his hands up, "Hey don't blame me, Winter was the one who decided paper was an acceptable Christmas present."

Winter smiled mischievously, and snuggled back against Jacin. Iko was beaming and leaning against Kinney, and even Scarlet gave Thorne a reluctant smile and rested her head on Wolf, who held her tenderly.

Relieved at Scarlet's reaction, Thorne put his arm around Cress and squeezed her gently laughing as they sat together in the packing fluff. Soon, the room was again filled with the jovial talking and laughter of the crew.

Cinder looked up at Kai. "Merry Christmas," she said quietly.

He smiled at her. "Merry Christmas."

 **The End**


End file.
